Comment

Tough but very tip heavy This sabre has no distal or profile taper to the strongly curved blade, being a constant 4mm thick and 30mm wide until the tip, resulting in a 10 inch point of balance. This is very tip heavy, making percussive strikes strong but slow to recover from. It's a good weight, but this balance gives your arm and shoulder a massive workout.

The blade is a very hard and tempered alloy with a rounded and blunt edge. The tip is pointy and sharp. I ground the tip off to safely spar with it, but alternatively, one could sharpen the edge for cutting. The very hard metal makes any grinding a mission.

The hilt is cast brass of fair thickness. The guard does not overly protect the hand, so if you're going to spar with this thing, you'll want to wear a gauntlet of some kind; trouble is, most gauntlets are too big to fit under the knuckle guard.

The finish is good and shiny, but the fit is poor; the handle looks nice, but I found the tang rotates in the handle. This isn't a great problem, but is a bit annoying, and with time will put stress on the tang, which will encourage tang failure.

On that point, the tang is a half half proper tang, with a welded on rod (rat's tail) half way along the handle. This is a poor arangement, and it's only a matter of time before it breaks at the weld between the rod and blade extension.

Overall, this beast of a sabre looks nice and is reasonably strong. It's balance is not the greatest for finess fighting, and eventually the tang will give way. For the money it's a fun stage or costume piece, and with caveats an entertaining sparring weapon, that with heavy use will eventually break in the tang.

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Comment

More of a cavalry sabre than a naval one, but that is my only stipulation. The sabre I received is one of my favourite pieces I own. It was wonderfully made, very solid (and heavy, though for a cavalry sabre that is not surprising) and was quickly delivered.

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